Swimming against your competion

20 minutes an event! That's it? For that we can't swim against our own age group? I'm so happy that on Saturday we get to go home at 4:50 instead of 5:05. We felt we should seed the 200s all the same way (all by age group or all by time). For instance, we didn't want to seed the 200 *** by age group while the 200 back was seeded by time (or vice versa). Likewise we didn't want to preseed one 200 event while doing positive check-in for another 200 event. One could argue we are already not doing the same thing across the board (50s, 100s, 200s, 400s, 800s, 1500s) so why not seed each event uniquely on each day as needed. Right or wrong, we decided to be consistent with the seeding at least for the race distance. Anyway, it is true the time savings may not have been great for some of the 200s but with the order of events we needed to do it for other 200s, so the hammer came down on all of them. Finally, we had the largest Summer Nationals in USMS history plus we had an 8 lane pool, so if there was ever a time to do this (seed 200s by time) to save time this was the meet. Aside: a bad situation is no shows for a positive check-in event (USA-S penalizes swimmers by not letting them swim their next event if this happens). I think there were 12 No Shows in the 1500 last week. That would have saved close to 30 minutes off the ~10pm finish time had those swimmers not checked-in. There were a ton of empty lanes for a deck seeded 500 free on Sunday at a particular Nationals, so we got to wondering if this was an issue with swimmers being out of gas by Sunday morning (while it seemed like a good idea to them on Tuesday or Wednesday when they checked-in). Turns out the No-Show rate for the 500 free is high for men regardless of day; and low for women regardless of day. One can draw their own conclusions there! If that's is all the time it saves this certainly won't be a solution to shortening the meets if the national meets continue to grow. It's too late for Mission Viejo but a subject the championship committee should revisit with the comments in this thread taken into consideration. Well said, and I agree. I also think the "sixth event" rule is unfair and a better solution exists. We don't know until 35 days before the meet starts how many swimmers are entered (even less days if the popular request to extend the entry deadline was granted). The Order of Events (4 day vs 5 day formats) needs to be published before the entry form is available, so it's not an option to change that platform. Then all you have left are seeding configurations to manipulate to produce manageable days. How many pools have 10 lanes for long course? Georgia Tech(which most people complained about for scy nationals) and the hall of fame pool have 10 long course lanes. Requiring 10 lanes for lcm nationals isn't a realistic option every year, unless usms wants to hold it at a limited number of venues. FWIW there were 2 bidders for 2013 Summer Nationals and both had 8 lane pools. We were fortunate in Puerto Rico (2010) and Omaha (2012) to have 10 lane pools, but those were indeed rarities for LCM Nationals. But you are right that a 10 lane pool for LCM Nationals is extremely helpful (e.g. we didn't have to cut the sixth event in Omaha, even with ~1250 swimmers). Note that SPIRE (2015 LC) has a 10 lane pool. And today the announcer usually only mentioned the heat winners, which left older swimmers who did well in their heats unrecognized. I was not at the meet but this is not really a seeding issue, it's an announcer issue. I'm quite sure an announcer like Mark Gill would be able to call out standout swims regardless of placing in a given heat. But again, I was not at the meet so I am just speculating. Jeff

20 minutes an event! That's it? For that we can't swim against our own age group? I'm so happy that on Saturday we get to go home at 4:50 instead of 5:05. We felt we should seed the 200s all the same way (all by age group or all by time). For instance, we didn't want to seed the 200 *** by age group while the 200 back was seeded by time (or vice versa). Likewise we didn't want to preseed one 200 event while doing positive check-in for another 200 event. One could argue we are already not doing the same thing across the board (50s, 100s, 200s, 400s, 800s, 1500s) so why not seed each event uniquely on each day as needed. Right or wrong, we decided to be consistent with the seeding at least for the race distance. Anyway, it is true the time savings may not have been great for some of the 200s but with the order of events we needed to do it for other 200s, so the hammer came down on all of them. Finally, we had the largest Summer Nationals in USMS history plus we had an 8 lane pool, so if there was ever a time to do this (seed 200s by time) to save time this was the meet. Aside: a bad situation is no shows for a positive check-in event (USA-S penalizes swimmers by not letting them swim their next event if this happens). I think there were 12 No Shows in the 1500 last week. That would have saved close to 30 minutes off the ~10pm finish time had those swimmers not checked-in. There were a ton of empty lanes for a deck seeded 500 free on Sunday at a particular Nationals, so we got to wondering if this was an issue with swimmers being out of gas by Sunday morning (while it seemed like a good idea to them on Tuesday or Wednesday when they checked-in). Turns out the No-Show rate for the 500 free is high for men regardless of day; and low for women regardless of day. One can draw their own conclusions there! If that's is all the time it saves this certainly won't be a solution to shortening the meets if the national meets continue to grow. It's too late for Mission Viejo but a subject the championship committee should revisit with the comments in this thread taken into consideration. Well said, and I agree. I also think the "sixth event" rule is unfair and a better solution exists. We don't know until 35 days before the meet starts how many swimmers are entered (even less days if the popular request to extend the entry deadline was granted). The Order of Events (4 day vs 5 day formats) needs to be published before the entry form is available, so it's not an option to change that platform. Then all you have left are seeding configurations to manipulate to produce manageable days. How many pools have 10 lanes for long course? Georgia Tech(which most people complained about for scy nationals) and the hall of fame pool have 10 long course lanes. Requiring 10 lanes for lcm nationals isn't a realistic option every year, unless usms wants to hold it at a limited number of venues. FWIW there were 2 bidders for 2013 Summer Nationals and both had 8 lane pools. We were fortunate in Puerto Rico (2010) and Omaha (2012) to have 10 lane pools, but those were indeed rarities for LCM Nationals. But you are right that a 10 lane pool for LCM Nationals is extremely helpful (e.g. we didn't have to cut the sixth event in Omaha, even with ~1250 swimmers). Note that SPIRE (2015 LC) has a 10 lane pool. And today the announcer usually only mentioned the heat winners, which left older swimmers who did well in their heats unrecognized. I was not at the meet but this is not really a seeding issue, it's an announcer issue. I'm quite sure an announcer like Mark Gill would be able to call out standout swims regardless of placing in a given heat. But again, I was not at the meet so I am just speculating. Jeff